


Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life

by Laine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Apocalypse, Dark, F/M, Ficlet, Future Fic, Valonqar Prophecy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 18:37:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20783249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laine/pseuds/Laine
Summary: If there is a life beyond today, a future beyond what they can see, then the Lannisters must stand with the survivors.(Cersei, Jaime, Sansa, and the apocalypse.)





	Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic comes from the New Testament's Book of Revelations.

When she wakes in the darkness to numbness in her extremities, to weak joints and shallow breaths and a fever raging in her head…she knows that this is the end.

Jaime weeps when she whispers the truth; his vulnerability twists her stomach, but she pushes aside the revulsion. She needs him too much to dwell on minor disappointments. That time has passed.

Cersei allows him to cradle her in his arms for a moment before reminding him of the pact. The promise made on a sun-dappled shore a lifetime ago, when both were whole and golden and perfect. She circles her bony fingers around his right wrist; it had been the right hand, Jaime’s strong, infallible right hand, that clasped her own, the blood from their pricked fingers mingling and rushing down their arms. “You will not go without me, nor I without you. We will die together as we were born together.” They had sealed the agreement with an urgent fuck on the beach, the sand scrubbing them raw and red as newborn babes. 

“You will not let me go alone.” A statement, not a question- for all that’s transpired between them, all of the woe and betrayal and friction, her Jaime will not fail her. Not in this.

“Never.” He kisses her breathless, his tears hot on her cheeks, and she forces herself to ignore the alien chill of the golden hand where it presses against her lower back.

“When?” he sighs into her mouth, and he utters a choked sob when she pulls away from him. 

“Not yet.” The cold air raises goosepimples on her arms and legs, but the heat of the fever is nearly enough to send her swooning- she reaches up to smooth a dirty lick of hair from Jaime’s forehead before nodding over his shoulder. “The girl.”

“What of her?” he snaps with a roll of the eyes. Not for the first time, Cersei laments her brother’s utter lack of guile. He wishes her to believe that he holds nothing but scorn and distaste for the third member of their party. But his actions contradict his attitude; she has seen him offer Sansa his own portion of gamey meat and the warmest of his threadbare blankets. He whispers in his sleep sometimes, echoing promises made to Catelyn Stark back when the world belonged to the Lannisters. He keeps the girl alive however he can, but he fears that Cersei would consider his attentions a betrayal. And at another time, in another place, she might have thought of it that way. But not now. Not here.

He asks with a hiccup in his voice whether she means for the girl to die with them. She had considered it, back when they first took their red-haired hostage. It was her last chance, after all, to destroy the Starks on her own terms, before merciless nature came to cast judgement upon them all. Little Sansa had seethed and wept and screamed into the indifferent skies, but a few pieces of twine around her arms and legs and carefully-rationed nourishment turned her docile. Rage does not feed her as it feeds Cersei; this girl wants to love and be loved, and she soon allowed her hatred for the Lannisters to blow away like dead flower petals in the wind. 

Cersei calls her name, soft and dulcet, and a misty smile dances across Sansa’s face as she rises and walks to the bed pallet, twisting the chain of her single bird necklace around her index finger.

It surprises her to realize how little death frightens her now. The world is ending, after all- soon, there will be no choice in the matter, not for her, not for anyone. And the pain of her illness intensifies every day…it would be a mercy to leave filthy mortality behind, to be with her father and mother and children…

(And Jaime. Always Jaime.)

But a wicked voice hisses in her ear, again and again: _There is always a chance. A chance that the reckoning will pass over a chosen few, a group left behind to build a new world._

She will not be among them…it is too late for that. And Jaime cannot be among them…what good would he be, as only half a man, half a soul? But if there is a life beyond today, a future beyond what she can see, the Lannisters must stand with the survivors.

When she reveals her plan, Jaime blanches white and Sansa burns red. But although they sputter protestations, they cannot deny her…she knows it and they know it. And all it takes is a gentle stroke of Sansa’s cheek and a soft kiss to Jaime’s temple to unfasten her twin’s trousers and coax the girl’s smallclothes down her legs.

She cradles Jaime’s head in her lap as Sansa straddles him. And then, when he flips the girl to her back and props her legs on his shoulders, Cersei sits behind him, peppering kisses up and down his spine. And when Sansa kneels on her hands and knees and Jaime takes her from behind, Cersei combs her thick red hair with her fingers, catching and pulling the curls.

They repeat, over and over, as the sun rises and peaks and sets again. She counts Jaime’s ejaculations….seven, eight, nine….enough for a child, she’s sure of it, enough for another Lannister to carry the family name, should the sun rise on a new world instead of remaining forever below the horizon. 

The girl falls asleep after the eleventh, her thighs sticky and her skin slicked with sweat, even in the chill of the cave. Cersei leans down to brush her lips over Jaime’s soft cock before kissing up his chest and resting her head in the curve of his shoulder. 

  
“Father would be pleased,” she mouths against Jaime’s neck as she reaches for his left hand and closes the fingers around her own throat.


End file.
